Iranian political prisoner and civil activist Bahare Hedayat announced on September 13 the end of her hunger strike after 14 days.
“I will end my strike, but not my commitment [which will endure] until the day when the Islamic Republic, this anti-freedom government, is removed from the soil of Iran,” she wrote in a statement from Tehran’s Evin prison.
Hedayat is a well-known human rights activist in Iran who has been arrested and imprisoned several times for her activism.
She is currently serving a four-year and eight-month sentence for participating in protests after the Islamic Republic Guard Corps (IRGC) shot down a Ukrainian airliner in January 2020.
The activist was moved to hospital on September 13 after launching a hunger strike on August 31 to protest the death of Javad Rouhi, a man who was detained during the recent nationwide protests and died under suspicious circumstances while in prison.
Rouhi’s family, fellow political prisoners and activists urged Hedayat to end her protest action, fearing for her life.
In her statement, Hedayat explained that she went on hunger strike “to remember the endless resistance in the street, to remember the will, courage and conscience that boiled in the university, and to remember the hopes that were born” during the widespread protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody on September 16, 2022.
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